Out of Line

Nayantara Sahgal, born into the first family of Indian politics, is one of India’s finest writers. Novelist, essayist, political commentator and memoirist, everything she wrote, whether political or literary, followed the evolution of democracy in post-Independence India. What connects Sahgal’s fiction and non-fiction is politics; what propels her politics is the idea of India. The three strands of personal, political and literary are inextricably woven in her writing, and just as it is impossible to separate a writer’s life from her text, Nayantara Sahgal cannot be read without reference to the political life of the country. Charged with stepping out of line in her political writing, Sahgal displayed a similar tendency in her personal life, risking both social disapproval and political displeasure. She carried on regardless. This literary, personal and political biography of this important writer, with a beautifully crafted Afterword, is a first, based on interviews, private papers and letters, first-hand information and archival research.

Ritu Menon is a publisher and writer, and is the co-founder of the feminist press Kali for Women. Among her many published books is the ground-breaking Borders & Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition. She has also edited several anthologies of fiction and non-fiction writing by women.